Are risk managers better off without the federal government looking over their shoulders? In the long run, I don't think so, yet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is supposedly taking a more passive role when it comes to regulating workplace exposures, according to a major piece in today's “New York Times.”
The article–headlined: “Loosening The Rules: OSHA Leaves Worker Safety In The Hands Of Industry”–reports that “since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.”
The reporter–Stephen Labaton–added that OSHA “has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.”
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